(201) Magazine Blogs

Monday, January 30, 2012

The Rangers were back on the ice this afternoon after their five-day All-Star break and while the players and coach John Tortorella expect some rustiness after the time off, they were a little surprised at how crisp the team looked.

Tortorella actually said it looked so good to him that he wanted to stop it after 20 minutes and “bottle it.”

“We want to try to pick up where we left off,” Brandon Dubinsky said. “That’s easier said than done. But the guys are mature. We come to play for each other and we want to win every night.You could expect a practice like this to be sloppy. But it wasn’t. Tomorrow will be the same thing. We’ll try to keep getting it back. It’ll be nerve-wracking in the first period getting our legs back.”

All-Stars Marian Gaborik and Dan Girardi were the only healthy Rangers not on ice as they received a day of rest. Henrik Lundqvist wanted to face some live shots before tomorrow’s game with the Devils. Steve Eminger, who should be ready to play in a week or so after going through battle drills today, and Jeff Woywitka were among the seven defensemen on the ice. Tortorella said Mike Sauer (concussion) was not on the ice before the media was let into practice. Erik Christensen was back practicing after a two-week conditioning stint with Connecticut (AHL)

Christensen, though, knows returning to the Rangers doesn’t equate to returning to the lineup. He has played just four games for the Rangers since Nov. 23 and none since Dec. 17. He said, for now, he just wants “to stay out of the way,” be a supportive teammate and maintain a positive attitude.

“I don’t see any other option,” Christensen said. “It is what it is. The team is playing well. I was watching every game down there. It’s impressive what the guys are doing. It’s night and day (from last season). I thought we were a good team last year. But it’s impressive what we’re doing.”

Without Gaborik, Christensen’s fellow healthy scratch brother Wojtek Wolski skate on Derek Stepan’s line with Carl (fastest skater) Hagelin. Otherwise, the one change was Brian Boyle was back centering Ruslan Fedotenko and Brandon Prust while Brad Richards was back centering Dubinsky and Ryan Callahan.

Dubinsky, by the way, did not get to see the All-Star Game as he was traveling back from a family wedding in Alaska. But he was loudly giving it to Lundqvist, asking how many goals Gaborik scored against him. Dubinsky ribbed the goalie by asking if it was five, like Gaborik scored against Lundqvist when he was with the Wild. Lundqvist calmly replied, yeah, it was five, then made a quieter snide remark about Dubinsky’s counting ability.

About

ANDREW GROSS covers the New York Rangers for The Record and Herald News, having joined the North Jersey Media Group in November 2007. Gross also covered the Rangers and New York Jets, as well as St. John’s basketball and Army football, for Gannett Newspapers and The Journal News (N.Y.). He graduated from Syracuse University in 1989 with a degree in newspaper journalism.